"If I think about brands with which, for the sake of argument I’ll acknowledge I have some sort of relationship, it’s akin to the ‘relationship’ I have with a good waiter. He doesn’t drone on about his kids or tipping trends, he doesn’t ask me what I think of his new apron or recite his resume. He’ll share his thoughts on the menu or the wine list but spares me his ideas on solving the crisis in the Middle East. He’s there when I need him and melts into the background when I don’t...."

I've been on Twitter for about 3 weeks now and I've noticed something alarming.

Among my circle of twits there are a few people who are unusually annoying. They bombard me with an unrelenting torrent of unfiltered stream-of-consciousness nonsense and thinly disguised self-promotion.

The scary part? They're all social media consultants and experts. Not some, all.

These are the people who are supposed to be expert at "managing brands" online through social media.

I "friended" them originally because I thought they were interesting and would have something valuable to say.

My opinion of them has plummeted in the past few weeks. As far as I can tell, they are abysmal at managing their own "brands" on line.

You'd think someone claiming to be an expert in this area would understand the difference between the volume knob and the tone knob.

Three short weeks ago, I was someone who thought highly of them. Today I am totally annoyed with them and sick of their pestering.

And they've done it all through the miracle of social media.

Footnote:All the annoying ones are social media experts. But notall the social media experts I follow are annoying. Everyone got that?

"Shakespeare was a storyteller. You're a copywriter.""Good ads appeal to us as consumers. Great ads appeal to us as humans.""As an ad medium, the web is a much better yellow pages and a much worse television."

"Sometimes success in the advertising business requires sitting quietly and letting clients proceed with their hysterical delusions."

"Marketers prefer precise answers that are wrong to imprecise answers that are right."

"Brand studies last for months, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and generally have less impact on business than cleaning the drapes."

"The idea that the same consumer who was frantically clicking her TV remote to escape from advertising was going to merrily click her mouse to interact with it is going to go down as one of the great advertising delusions of all time."

"Nobody really knows what "creativity" is. Every year thousands of people take a pilgrimage to find out. This involves flying to Cannes, snorting cocaine, and having sex with smokers."

"Marketers habitually overestimate the attraction of new things and underestimate the power of traditional consumer behavior."

"We don’t get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand. We get them to love our brand by convincing them to try our product."

"In American business, there is nothing stupider than the previous generation of management."

"If the message is right, who cares what screen people see it on? If the message is wrong, what difference does it make?"

"The only form of product information on the planet less trustworthy than advertising is the shrill ravings of web maniacs."

"There's no bigger sucker than a gullible marketer convinced he's missing a trend."

"All ad campaigns are branding campaigns. Whether you intend it to be a branding campaign is irrelevant. It will create an impression of your brand regardless of your intent."

"Nobody ever got famous predicting that things would stay pretty much the same."